English Genitives Research Articles

Interference in Translation and Simultaneous Interpreting from Italian into English. An Intermodal Analysis of English Genitives in the European Parliament Interpreting Corpus

This article illustrates an intermodal study on simultaneous interpreting and translation from Italian into English based primarily on the European Parliament Interpreting Corpus (EPIC) and official translations from the European Parliament. In line with Gideon Toury’s posited law of interference, the hypothesis that drives the present study is that interpreters and translators working into English from Italian may underrepresent the ’s-genitive as a result of the syntactic asymmetry between English (which alternates between ’s and of) and Italian (which only has one type of prepositional phrase consisting of di + noun). The results of this study indicate that ’s-genitives occur with lower frequency in interpreted English than in non-mediated English, thus revealing a particular form of syntactic interference. The same tendency, however, is not found in translations from Italian into English. This difference is explained by recourse to Englund Dimitrova’s (2005) findings on translation expertise and to the literal translation hypothesis (Chesterman 2011) and by suggesting that simultaneous interpreting tends to adhere to the source-language syntax more closely than translation, thus displaying similarities with translation drafts. The results also point to the theoretical and methodological limitations of the théorie du sens developed by the Paris School of Interpreters and Translators.

Cognitive Semantics, Linguistic Typology and Grammatical Polysemy: “Possession” and the English Genitive

This paper explores the cognitive semantics of the typological category “possession” using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (nsm) approach. At the macro level, we argue that “possession” is not a unitary cognitive category for speakers, but instead represents an aggregation of diverse semantic schemas which center around three distinct conceptual anchor points: ownership, body-parts, and kinship relations. It is shown how each of these conceptual anchor points can be clearly identified using the nsm metalanguage of semantic primes and molecules. At the micro level, the paper undertakes a close examination of the cognitive semantics of English s-genitives in the frame [THIS SOMEONE’S] SOMETHING, e.g. Mary’s ring, Mary’s shoes, Mary’s drawing, Mary’s plate, Mary’s train. It is argued that the wide range of use of the s-genitive can be captured in a set of five semantic schemas, which constitute a network of grammatical polysemy.

Syntactic planning of English genitives in L1 and L2 production: The Animacy Rule Model

Choice of a syntactic frame in language production is predetermined by the relative conceptual accessibility of the participating referents, whereby animate entities precede inanimate ones. This pilot study is an initial investigation into the effects of conceptual accessibility on choice of English genitive construction in native and second language production. The sentence-recall experiment completed by native and non-native speakers of English finds evidence in favor of a single-stage model with direct conceptual-to-constituent structure mapping, devoid of grammatical functions. Implications for native and non-native models of speech production and the nature of conceptual accessibility in English genitives are discussed, whilst a large overlap between native and advanced non-native speakers is argued to be inconsistent with claims of the vulnerability of uninterpretable formal features that do not form part of the L1 grammar of late L2 acquirers (Tsimpli and Dimitrakopoulou, 2007).

Multiple Case Checking in English Genitive DPs

D may involve multiple case checking, which is observed in cross-linguistic data. It is well-known, on the other hand, that English is a type of language that disallows multiple case checking. In this paper, I will present a case where D appears to check case more than one time in English ? the one that involves genitive constructions. I will argue that the multiple case checking phenomenon is misleading, and that D is splitted into two functional categories ? i.e. D and Kase (K) ? in genitive constructions. Under the current approach, K bears an uninterpretable case feature (i.e. [ucase:gen*]) responsible for checking genitive case within DPs. On top of KP, D is projected, bearing another unvalued case feature that is subject to agree with a case assigner in a clause. The current analysis can capture the general fact that D is only allowed to check case once in English and resolve the puzzle of the seemingly multiple case checking phenomenon in genitive constructions.

Variation in English genitives across modality and genres

The choice of genitive construction in English is conditioned by numerous semantic, syntactic and phonological factors. The present study explores the influence of these factors across different modalities (speech vs writing) and genres (e.g. press, fiction, etc.), and models the mediating effect of language-external variables on internal cognitive and linguistic factors within the context of a probabilistic grammar of genitive choice. The discussion revolves around debates concerning the driving force(s) behind recent changes in newspaper genitives, concluding that the trend reflects a push toward more economical modes of expression in reportage texts. Curiously, analysis finds few significant interactions with low-level processing-related factors, e.g. possessor frequency and lexical density – a surprising result in light of recent research. However, analysis further reveals significant inter-genre variability among several other crucial factors including possessor animacy and final sibilancy, which are significantly reduced in journalistic prose. These latter findings offer indirect evidence in favor of economization, and offer insight into the connections between external stylistic concerns, specific linguistic practices and internal probabilistic weights associated with specific grammatical constructions.

Arabic and English genitive constructions

It is well documented that there is a one-to-many relationship between Arabic and English genitival constructions. However, it is unclear whether, given this syntactic variation, such constructions show equivalence in semantic function. For this purpose, a corpus-based contrastive analysis of these genitive constructions in a bilingual novel is carried out. As a prelude to a quantitative and qualitative inspection of the data, the (non)interchangeability of the alternative English genitives is determined by eliciting intuitive judgments from 10 linguistically naïve native speakers of British English. Quantitatively, the study shows that the Arabic genitive almost covers the semantic functions expressed by the various English genitives found in the corpus. Qualitatively, the study reveals that the flexibility derived from the English genitive variation, as opposed to the fixed word order of the Arabic genitive, allows the speaker to convey additional meaning. However, the Arabic genitive which employs various formal devices such as overt markers of case, gender, number, definiteness and person can express the same semantic functions. These features render Arabic functional with one genitive and require English to vary its genitive relative to certain phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic conditions.

英语属格的演变——两种去屈折化

英语属格在漫长的演变过程中同时受到了两种去屈折化机制的作用，这与大多数印欧语的单一的语法化方式并不相同。本文首先讨论了当代英语中的属格词尾“-’s”的语法地位的问题，认为-’s是不典型的附着形式，在此基础上系统地归纳了词尾演变的进程，分析了多种在属格发展过程中出现的重要现象以及问题，论证了s-属格的去语法化，进而揭示英语属格在语言接触下的独有的演变模式。The evolution of English genitive case has been influenced by two types of deflexion in the long course of language change. This varies from the mechanism possessed by most Indo-European languages. Starting with studying the grammatical status of the genitive marker –’s, this article argues that –’s is now an atypical clitic. After that, the development of genitive constructions is de-scribed from both the morphological and the syntactic perspectives and within such a description, several important phenomena are investigated. In consideration of the degrammaticalization of Saxon genitive and the emergence of Roman genitive, the unique developmental pattern of English genitives is revealed.

From language-specific to shared syntactic representations: The influence of second language proficiency on syntactic sharing in bilinguals

Studies on cross-linguistic syntactic priming suggest that bilinguals can share syntactic representations across languages (e.g., Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004). But how are these representations established in late learners of a second language? Specifically, are representations of syntactic structures in a second language (L2) immediately collapsed with similar structures of the first language (L1), or are they initially represented separately? In order to investigate this, we primed the use of English genitives with Dutch (Experiment 1) and English (Experiment 2) genitives (e.g., het hemd van de jongen/the shirt of the boy vs. de jongen zijn hemd/the boy’s shirt) in late Dutch–English bilinguals with varying levels of proficiency in English (their L2). The head nouns of prime and target constructions either had the same meaning (hemd/shirt – shirt) or a different meaning (duim/thumb – shirt), in order to test whether the use of both genitives was generalized across nouns. Experiment 1 found stronger between-language priming for more than less proficient bilinguals in both conditions, thus suggesting a shift from language-specific to shared syntactic representations. Experiment 2 suggests that these early, language-specific syntactic representations might be item-specific: Less proficient bilinguals showed much weaker priming when the heads of prime and target constructions had different meanings than when they were repeated.

Elmo's Sister's Ball: The Problem of Acquiring Nominal Recursion

Recursion is the ability to iterate syntactic constituents inside constituents. Experimental and corpus literature indicates that comprehending recursive structures is difficult for children. Since recursion is a fundamental property of language, the result of the application of core minimal tools (merge, label, and select), why does it present an acquisition challenge? We propose that while Merge itself is universal, its application is determined by selection, which is extensively parameterized. We investigate whether children's difficulties can be defined in terms of the complexity of the selectional demands involved. This investigation leads to three empirical questions: i. How does NP recursion compare to NP coordination in acquisition? ii. Do children acquire each level of recursion independently or is recursion triggered automatically once the initial selectional requirements are acquired? iii. Are there differences in the acquisition of different types of nominal recursion? We compare the selectional requirements of English genitives, PPs, and NP coordination. Our syntactic analysis suggests that genitive recursion has more complex selectional demands than PP recursion. We designed a study eliciting production of two level embedded prepositional and genitive NPs. Preschool-aged English-speaking children (n = 46) and adults (n = 11) participated in an elicitation study. Children were comparable to adults in their ability to produce three coordinated NPs, but had substantial difficulty linking three NPs using recursion. First- and second-level embedding were clearly distinct steps in development. These findings have implications for the independence of phrasal and selectional development in children and for our understanding of structural complexity in child language and in theory.

Recursion introduces a left-branching bias (where possible)

Capitalizing upon the recursive nature of Saxon Genitives in English, this note examines the constituent structure of double Saxon Genitives such as (he took) my sister-in-law's child's life. An analysis of 200 cases from both the spoken and the written modality reveals a distribution of 70% left branching and 30% right branching. This left-branching bias exists in the face of a general right-branching preference in English. It is argued that left branching stems from the recursive structure of the Saxon Genitive. As listeners and readers take in the acoustic signal, they apply probabilistic decoding strategies and expect the more frequent nonrecursive Saxon Genitive to come up. Thus, the first two lexemes are treated as sister constituents. This introduces an advantage for left branching because such a configuration can be easily expanded into a double Saxon Genitive. By contrast, a right-branching structure leads the listener up the garden path. Branching direction in double Saxon Genitives is also found to be influenced by the animacy of their constituents. An animate possessor amplifies the left-branching bias whereas an inanimate possessor increases the incidence of right branching.

Cynthia L. Allen, Genitives in early English: Typology and evidence, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, xiv+354 pp.(Central Japan English Studies)

Cynthia L. Allen, Genitives in early English: Typology and evidence, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, xiv+354 pp.(Central Japan English Studies)

Review of Allen (2008): Genitives in early English: Typology and evidence

Review of Allen (2008): Genitives in early English: Typology and evidence

A Semantic Scattering model for the automatic interpretation of English genitives

AbstractAn important problem in knowledge discovery from text is the automatic extraction of semantic relations. This paper addresses the automatic classification of thesemantic relationsexpressed by English genitives. A learning model is introduced based on the statistical analysis of the distribution of genitives' semantic relations in a corpus. The semantic and contextual features of the genitive's noun phrase constituents play a key role in the identification of the semantic relation. The algorithm was trained and tested on a corpus of approximately 20,000 sentences and achieved an f-measure of 79.80 per cent for of-genitives, far better than the 40.60 per cent obtained using a Decision Trees algorithm, the 50.55 per cent obtained using a Naive Bayes algorithm, or the 72.13 per cent obtained using a Support Vector Machines algorithm on the same corpus using the same features. The results were similar for s-genitives: 78.45 per cent using Semantic Scattering, 47.00 per cent using Decision Trees, 43.70 per cent using Naive Bayes, and 70.32 per cent using a Support Vector Machines algorithm. The results demonstrate the importance of word sense disambiguation and semantic generalization/specialization for this task. They also demonstrate that different patterns (in our case the two types of genitive constructions) encode different semantic information and should be treated differently in the sense that different models should be built for different patterns.

Indefinite possessive NPs and the distinction between determining and nondetermining genitives in English

This article tries to fill a descriptive gap in the literature on English possessive NPs by offering a systematic description of indefinite possessive NPs (e.g. a friend's house, a widow's pension, men's suits). Specifically, two descriptive issues are dealt with. Firstly, the different types of determining indefinite genitives are discussed. It is shown that indefinite determiner genitives can have specific reference, generalized reference or generic reference. Moreover, it is argued that in all of these cases, the indefinite genitive specifies a reference point (Langacker 1993) for the identification of the ‘possessee’ and functions as a grounding predication. It is also proposed that subsective gradience (Aarts 2004, 2007) can be diagnosed for determining genitives, i.e. that more central and more peripheral members can be distinguished within this category. Secondly, the distinction between determining and nondetermining, classifying genitives (e.g. a [woman's magazine] ‘a magazine for women’) is re-examined. This distinction is relevant to the description of indefinite possessive NPs, since they have been considered as evidence for a fuzzy boundary between determining and nondetermining genitives (Taylor 1996, Rosenbach 2006). It is argued, against such an analysis, that the two functions of the genitive can be clearly distinguished, even in ‘bridging contexts’ (Evans & Wilkins 2000), i.e. contexts in which both a determining and a nondetermining reading are supported. Consequently, there is no intersective gradience (Aarts 2004, 2007) between determining and nondetermining genitives on the level of the constructional semantics.

Descriptive genitives in English: a case study on constructional gradience

This article offers an in-depth treatment of a ‘nonprototypical’ s-genitive, i.e. the descriptive genitive (e.g. women's magazine), which has so far received little attention in the grammars of English. Various types of descriptive genitives are distinguished, i.e. classifying, metaphorical, and generic genitives. In addition, the article raises a number of theoretical issues of a more general nature, such as the delimitation of syntactic phrases from compounds. Most importantly, it is argued that descriptive genitives provide evidence for constructional gradience in the English noun phrase in two ways: (1) gradience between determiner genitives and descriptive genitives, and (2) gradience between s-genitives and noun + noun sequences. A central claim is made that semantic overlaps may give rise to constructional gradience. In this respect the present article complements earlier accounts of gradience that have emphasized the importance of structural criteria only. The article concludes with a brief consideration of measure genitives, which are in many ways similar to descriptive genitives.

A note on ‘elliptical’, ‘absolute’, and ‘independent’ genitives in earlier English

A well-known peculiarity of Modern English is that nominal possessives can occur in ‘elliptical’ constructions in which no head noun is expressed:(1)(a) We'll meet at Mary's.(b) This is Mary's.(c) Mary's is red.

A Semantic Analysis of the English Genitive. Interaction of Lexical and Formal Semantics

Some earlier treatments of the semantics of the prenominal genitive assume two syntactic types for genitive NPs like the girl's, one which combines with relational nouns like sister, and another that combines with non‐relational nouns like car. In the former case the genitive relation is provided by the relational head noun, in the latter the source of the relation is taken to be provided by the utterance context. Our analysis uniformly assumes only one syntactic type for genitive NPs, viz., one that forces a genitive NP to combine only with relational nouns. In cases with inherently non‐relational head nouns, such as the girl's car, we hypothesize that the genitive NP coerces a shift of the meaning of the head noun so that it becomes relational. To determine the sort of meaning shift which is carried out, we appeal to the qualia structure of the lexical entry for the head noun. A consequence of this analysis is an extension of the area of lexically determined interpretations and a corresponding reduction of the context‐determined, pragmatic area.

Arguments or macroroles? : Two functional approaches to Old English quirky case

After comparing two functional approaches to the question of Old English deviant accusatives, genitives and datives, this paper follows Martín Arista (2001a, b) with respect to Old English prototypical verbal constructions: the prototypical transitive construction is defined as the active accomplishment version of verbs like writan 'write', the activity implementation of creation and consumption verbs representing the less-prototypical transitive construction; the active accomplishment use of verbs such as faran 'go' characterize the prototypical intransitive construction, whereas the activity version of motion verbs define the less-prototypical intransitive construction. The conclusion is reached that quirky case is not a feature of the morphosyntax of certain intransitive verbs of state and causative state, but a characteristic of verbal constructions that, deviating from both the transitive and the intransitive prototypes, show not only case-marking irregularity but also more case-marking choices than verbs that abide by the transitive or intransitive prototype. Since marked morphosyntax -including quirky case- is considered in this paper a consequence of the non-prototypical character of argument structure, it is claimed that the relationship between canonical lexical templates and their configurations should be semantically and syntactically motivated. The Principle of Lexical Template Instantiation guarantees the suitable degree of implementation of a lexical template by stipulating that, prototypically, all the internal variables of the instantiations of lexical templates are fully specified

The English genitive apostrophe: Judgements of errors and implications for teaching

The origins of the English Genitive Apostrophe (EGA) are relatively recent, and there is evidence of considerable variation in its use by native speakers. The prescriptive rules aimed at teachers and learners are frequently not followed in written English in the natural language environment. 15 German undergraduates of English, 15 UK undergraduates of English, and 15 postgraduate EFL teacher trainees in the UK were asked to identify and grade three categories of EGA errors made by native speakers. These categories were the omission of the EGA (e.g. mens fashions), the inclusion of EGA before the word final's’ in regular plural nouns (e.g. old telephone's), and the use of EGA with third person pronouns (e.g. her's). It is concluded that those judges exposed to explicit rules of EGA usage recognised more errors and judged them more severely. Results also showed that the three EGA error categories were evaluated with differing gravity. This paper suggests that with the EGA, the input coming at acquirers from the natural language environment may be so inconsistent or at variance with the prescriptive rules that deductive or controlled discovery teaching approaches appear more likely to lead to the acquisition of these rules.

Possessive genitives in English: a discourse perspective

'n Diskoersperspektief oor possessiewe uitdrukkings (soos John's car, the president's assassination, last year's election, ensovoorts) in Engels is aangebied. Daar is geredeneer dat die genitiewe nominaal soos 'n soort topic fungeer deurdat die konstruksie se hoofnaamwoord ‘gegrondeer’ word deur die vasstelling van 'n verwysingspunt vanwaar die referent van die hoofnaamwoord makliker geidentifiseer kan word. 'n Databasis van 240 uitdrukkings geneem uit verskillende tekstipes het die hipotese volledig bewys. Die feit dat die voorkoms van possessiewe uitdrukkings grootliks verskil het na aanleiding van die tekstipe het die spekulasie geregverdig dat kommunikasiesituasies (veral: gesproke versus geskrewe) verskil met betrekking tot die noodsaaklikheid van nominaalgrondiering.